Šum's Study Seminar in MGLC (2016- )

The main focus of the ŠUM’s Study seminar, organized in collaboration with International Centre of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana (MGLC), focuses on the systemic side of contemporary art and its troubles that often, especially in the local context of art, are dealt with by falling back on the “personal”.

More or less tightly knitted proffessional communities, composed of governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations and different public initiatives, and enclosed in narrow cultural districts and with limited funding possibilities, are becoming places where new, hybrid relations are established. These relations are defined by the disappearing of the divide between work and leisure, professional and personal, and are as such replacing the old formalist cultural values with the values of belonging, homeliness and likability.

The rethinking of the seemingly unproblematic and positive aspects of this decline from the alienated professionalism is the main objective of this seminar. Each time the seminar will present and analyse one of the selected art works and/or theoretical practices that offer different entry points and approaches to the phenomenon of the “personal” as outlined above. Besides specific problems of the works discussed, the seminar will open questions such as what system, processes of subjectivation, possibilities of operation and dedications to the “personal” are formed by this sorts of organizaton of the cultural field, but first and foremost, what are the possible reactions to them.

The seminar is coordinated by Domen Ograjenšek and Tjaša Pogačar and organized in collaboration with MGLC.